Dear Editor,
I have found Keith Bernard’s earlier letters illuminating and helpful. His latest (KW 02-09), however, is mistimed and misdirected. True, at a time when he can do nothing about it, Aubrey Norton has suddenly discovered the warts of the 2016 Petroleum Agreement. He and the APNU+AFC have dirty oil on their hands.
But Mr. Bernard manages the remarkable feat of attacking Norton while shifting attention from those who have controlled the petroleum sector for the past six years and who alone have had the power to do something about those warts. The PPP/C came to office condemning the Agreement and promising better. Yet it has refused even to invite ExxonMobil and its partners – under the terms of the Agreement – to discuss making its provisions more equitable.
More surprising is Mr. Bernard’s praise for officials supposedly “scaling their regulatory infrastructure in real time”. I clearly have missed much to do with oil. The Ministry of Natural Resources has never seriously sought to allay public concerns over poor auditing, weak contract administration or misconduct by the oil companies. It has failed to manage relinquishment properly and has been timid in imposing conditions in petroleum licences.
These are powers the Government already possesses. They require neither renegotiation nor Exxon’s consent. Yet the Ministry behaves less like a regulator than an adjunct of the companies it is supposed to regulate. Secrecy and passivity have become the default. Perhaps Mr. Bernard can identify one occasion on which the Ministry voluntarily confronted these concerns, published its analysis and explained to the public what corrective action it had taken.
The APNU+AFC must answer for signing the 2016 Agreement. Norton is about a decade late in recognising its defects. But the PPP/C must answer for six years of knowing those defects, condemning them, and deliberately refusing even to seek their correction.
Sincerely,
Christopher Ram
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